Hi, I am relatively new to xert and have been trying to utilise the planner . With the lockdown, I’ve been using zwift almost all the time, and slightly addicted doing as many routes as possible while also scoring badges. I wondered if I could figure the xss score’s for these routes and use them in my planner?Thanks,
Hi, zwift is a lot of fun indeed. Let me see if I understand and suggest a way to make it work for you. But first, let’s make sure we get the meaning of XSS which is the cumulative strain you endure during an activity. it means that if you ride the mountain route in zwift many times, you could get different XSS depending if you go really hard or more relaxed.
If you want a known XSS, you could create a work out in xert called “Mountain Route” with efforts matching the route, etc. Then export the work out into zwift. You could then use the different routes/work out you created into your planner. Does it make sense?
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Which type of (smart) trainer are you using and how do you record your activity? Zwift can export your activity to Strava - and probably other services - automatically, which can in turn sync to Xert. Or, if you do not have that ‘middle man’ option, download the activity from Zwift (probably TCX or FIT) and import it manually into Xert.
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Thanks for getting back. This helps me understand that my understating of xss wasn’t quite right. Watching Dr Stephen Cheung’s Youtube video, his utilisation of ‘activities’ in the planner lead me to think I could treat zwift rides the same way. And perhaps I can, but then the assumed xss will be the favourite’d ( starred) one out of the numerous identical rides. I guess, I went a step further to imagine and hope to find a guide/ average xss score for given distance and climb, so that I could figure how tired I would be before a ride/race. I now understand I can only integrate known values.
Thanks Robert. I have been using the middle man. JY’s reply above helped me understand what I had wrong with my understanding of xss. I was hoping that xxs could predicted average at times. And perhaps this quote I had read about entering activities without a power meter in the planner < Generally you’ll accumulate 40-50XSS per hour for easy riding and 90-110XSS per hour for extreme, high-intensity riding. Mostly, you’ll be somewhere in the middle.> lead me to think, I could throw in some guess numbers to give me an idea how much I can physically handle , let’s say before the end of a given week.
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Okay, so your Zwift activities go to Xert, but you are actually looking for a way to predict future activities?
In that case, I’d just fill the planner with suggested workouts, but not for more than a week, or as close to what you expect to be doing on a daily/weekly basis as possible.
Manually entering expected XSS is another possibility, but I take it you would like to follow XATA.
Export each day’s workout and ride it on Zwift, as good as you can.
Or am I completely misunderstanding your query?
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Not sure what you mean by ‘predict future activity’ . I wanted to do a mix of workouts and zwift rides. Obviously the workouts have a xss value, so that’s a known value, but zwift rides which I haven’t done yet, don’t ( such as alpe du zwift) So that’s guesswork. My hope was to find a guideline for the guesswork, so that I would know how I could manage my planner. In example: Let’s say I fill my planner with workouts for Mon, Tue, Weds and Friday . Then I do “tour of Fire & Ice”( 28.2km/1184m) from Zwift on Thursday. Since I haven’t done that yet, we don’t have an xss value. My hope was to have an idea of how far I could push myself for the remaining 2 days in advance without going in the red zone. Like for instance, to be able to predict from the beginning of the week if I will have the freshness to commit to a group ride of ( say the Lutscher on Zwift ) on Saturday if I go with what I put dow n on my planner. Does this make sense now?
I understand and that’s what I meant 
You can build your own workouts as suggested and derive XSS from that (to fill the planner) or fill the planner with XATA recommended workouts.
Whether you do those (exactly) by exporting them to Zwift, or just do your Zwift rides and keep your manually calculated XSS target as a match to XATA’s requirements to know how long or intense you would have to ride Zwift.
I would take XATA’s advise and export that to Zwift - there is a ZWO export for them. Then ride (them) in ERG mode on Zwift. That way, you will follow the right recommendations - or alter them slightly as needed - and see if you can do that hard Zwift race in the weekend.
Not sure if we’re on the same page now - I get it that you don’t know what Fire & Ice will do with you, but Xert is built around XATA. That doesn’t mean you can’t derive from that, but you should try to integrate it into your Zwift routine as much as possible.
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This is an interesting discussion, I will try to add some value. But first, let’s make sure that you understand that XSS is independent from the course you are riding to a certain extent. It is a measure of how hard you go compare to yourself. You could ride the tour of fire and ice 10 times and get a wide range of XSS. I rode it 30+ times thus far and I range from 130 XXS to 230 XXS; at 130 I was somewhat easy, at 230 I emptied the tank. Look at one for illustration Tour of Fire and Ice haute route watopia stage 2
@Cyclopaat is correct, the only way to predict XSS in advance is to create a workout. It is quite fun to think that we could have a work out matching a zwift route too; love the idea but it is not super easy to do perfectly. However, let’s give it a try!
Prerequisites:
- Decide how much XSS you are targeting = how hard is it going to be. For this example, I want to generate 140 XSS.
- Decide the FOCUS of your activity, read about this if you are not sure. In this case, I want an Endurance ride, Focus 20min or more.
- You need to know about the course, where the climbs or obstacles are located and how long to get at it at a certain speed. This is where it gets tricky because you power/kg (W/kg) defines your speed in zwift and our capabilities are unique. This is just to make it fun because we plan to work harder sometimes during the ride but super cool if it matches a climb or something!
Procedure:
- Need to build a work out generating 135 XSS and Focus duration endurance matching the Zwift tour of Fire and Ice course.
- The Howto build a workout is another topic lol!
- Analyzing to exhaustion the course Tour of Fire and Ice, I broke it down as follow;
- warm up for start of volcano to 5km mark, should be close to the small climbs by the italian village.
- Push up the dirt climbs until flat again
- steady state to the climb leading to the jungle circuit
- push hard up the climb
- recover down to the entry of the alpe
- Climb the alpe
- I created a work out that could match the terrain leading to 135 XSS and climbing the alpe in about 70min. Of course, it depends of your FTP and fitness, might just take you longer and the course vs effort might not match perfectly.
Anyway, I attached the picture of it, not sure how to share the .zwo file. Let me know if it make sense at all LOL! I could see an app creating a work out matching perfectly a zwift course in real time; that would be so cool.
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Also if you are repeating similar rides/races on Zwift, you can favourite (star) an activity in Xert once you’ve done it. Then you can drag it into the planner for a future date which will include the predicted XSS.
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lol! That was easy, thanks for the tips
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While not an answer to your original question, here’s my take on going after the badges:
I just pick whatever Xert workout I want/need to do and then see if there is a suitable Zwift route. This allows me to pick off most of the routes. I use the information found here to help me pick: https://zwiftinsider.com/route-ride-schedule/. Yesterday I did Up & Down LTP on the London Pretzel.
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Yeah that’s what I do too, except I use https://zwifthub.com which makes it easy to tick them off. You’d have to think Zwift are busy adding this into their companion app - picking routes is clunky at the moment.
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